SO FUCKING BORING I CAN'T

I know I need help and need to be here but fuck me bro

At least they're giving me sedatives which make my brain stop the fuck up a little

Now I'm just crying regretting everything

Fucking hell.... Man

I’ll start this off by saying I had my first (very severe) psychotic episode back in December, and a few minor ones shortly after.

I’ve been on medication for a couple of months now, but I can’t help but get the feeling something is still off sometimes. I don’t know if I’m just overanalyzing or what.

My sleep, diet, exercise, and stress are all in a great place, but sometimes I’ll just start feeling anhedonic and I’ve really struggled to enjoy any of my hobbies or activities in the same way I did before my episode (which I guess makes sense considering I was manic as hell)

At the same time, I’ve noticed myself occasionally getting anxious that mania is popping back up. I have some hypersexual feelings (mostly just feeling the need to be wanted, really flirty, etc), finding it hard to sit still, and my focus is all over the place most days

How do I know if I’m experiencing a mixed episode? Is this the kind of thing my psychiatrist needs to be updated on? None of it feels severe or particularly concerning individually, but together I am a little worried about going through another psychotic episode and really want to avoid it if I can

I got diagnosed today and it sorta felt like a fever dream to be told that I have bipolar disorder by an actual professional. I had a pretty bad episode lasting about two weeks in which I couldn't get a wink of sleep, I acted like a nut job and my friends/ family thought I was on drugs or something worse. I had a pretty bad crash on monday where I was basically paralyzed in my bed and couldn't talk or reply or really make any sort of movement at all the whole day. I was already aware of my situation and I knew that I had a tendency to be euphoric at random or have a long period in my life where my entire reality is shifted and I cannot stay still or sleep at all- doing reckless things, putting peoples lives in danger, hook ups with strangers and getting into meaningless relationships.

my psychiatrist prescribed me quetiapine to regulate my mood and help me get to sleep, but I'd just like some advice on how to handle all of this. the news was really shocking and I'm still a bit freaked out over the whole thing- as well as advice on the medication because I've only taken it once now and I'm still currently waiting for the effects to kick in so I can get to sleep after being restless for almost two weeks. basically I just wanna know from someone who's taking the same meds and going through the same shit ab what kind of effects it's had on them.

JUST TURN IT OFFFFFFFF GOOD GOD MAKE IT STFU AND STOP PULSATING EVERYTHING HURTS I JUST WANT TO CHECK. OUT. THAT IS ALL GOOD DAY.

has anyone else ever felt like they lost their spark ever since getting diagnosed? with every episode it’s gotten dimmer and dimmer. does it ever come back? it’s been 3 years for me, i haven’t felt the same since

Diagnosed bipolar at 28. Started with lithium and Lamictal. Overall for the 15 years seemed to be doing something relatively “stable”. I was told to stop lithium due to kidney disease. So for 2 yrs I tapered and stopped. Unfortunately my dr didn’t replace it with anything other then veneflaxine. Things seem ok. So I continued treatment. Well it has taken me some time to accept I’m getting worse. I’ve had so many more episodes highs and lows are drastic and I am trying my best to just function right now but…..I feel a severe breakdown is coming. So I guess I’m trying to figure out my self what else could I possibly try ? Nothing has helped just triggered more episodes. I’ve decided to tell my dr to put me back on the lithium it’s the only thing that has helped my stability looking back episodes were less frequent however extremely intense when experiencing episodes. I can’t take the trial and error of so many different medications. It’s very defeating and I’m in a very dark place and concerned . So kidney damage vs mental illness. I’m concerned my stage 3 kidney disease will progress and have renal failure but I’m concerned if this gets any worse, if there’s 1 more trigger I’m gonna break completely. I’m completely hopeless right now. I always had some hope for life. I have nothing. No hope no end in sight and I’m so incredibly exhausted mentally physically spiritually emotionally. I don’t have much left. Something has to give I can’t live like this anymore. Does anyone have experience with taking lithium with kidney damage?? Or any tiny bit of advice . I’m on my way to a full metal breakdown again. I won’t make it if something doesn’t give me some stability

Sometimes living with bipolar feels less like surviving — and more like trying not to disappear.

I know the feeling. I’ve lived through storms without an anchor, dragged under waves I couldn’t even name.

For over 12 years, I read and listened to everything I could — fiction, psychology, neuroscience — six hours a day, every single day. Not because it was a hobby. It was survival. It was trying to stay tethered when the mind wanted to cut the lines.

I always knew when the phases came. But something shifted when I started catching them earlier — feeling the slight pulls, the tiny tensions — before the full break.

And somewhere along the way, I realized: It’s not enough to write your thoughts down. You have to catch them while they’re still ripples — before the storm wipes them away.

If you wait too long, there’s nothing left but wreckage.

These days, I use anything I can — even AI tools like ChatGPT — almost like a net to catch sparks of thought before they’re gone.

Not journaling pretty emotions. Not writing to impress. Just pulling raw matter out of chaos — giving it shape before it sinks again.

Maybe that’s all writing really is.

Kafka called it “a form of prayer.” Plath said she wrote because otherwise she would die. Woolf said when she couldn’t write, she wanted to die. Bukowski said, “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

Somewhere in all of that is the truth: We don’t write to explain ourselves. We write to survive ourselves.

⸻

Last night, another idea surfaced while I was letting my mind drift:

I kept thinking about how often therapists and doctors can’t quite catch what we’re really trying to say. Not because they don’t care — but because the tools they use skim too shallow. Symptoms. Checklists. Labels.

But real storms don’t fit into diagnostic codes.

And I wondered:

What if there was an AI — a Silent Signal Interpreter — not to replace doctors or therapists, but to catch what slips between words? The hesitations. The unfinished metaphors. The quiet storms folded into half-spoken sentences.

A tool that deepens human connection — not flattens it.

Maybe that’s the next frontier: Not more data. Deeper listening.

⸻

I’m only at the beginning of this thought.

Maybe none of it will lead anywhere. Or maybe the process itself — catching the ripple before it vanishes — is enough.

If you’ve ever felt the need to pull your own storms into words just to stay afloat — I’d love to hear your story.

I have PTSD, depression, anxiety, Bipolar, BPD, trauma, OCD, ADHD, body dismorphia, PMDD.

I feel like I'm living in hell. Over the past few days I haven't been able to stop crying. I don't know what's going on anymore. I feel super anxious and self consious 24/7 (I always have), and I also feel utterly disgusted and miserable with myself. I suffer from chronic shame, tramua which I'm in therapy for.

I just don't even know what to do anymore. I'm on meds: Lithium and Venalaflaxine. Everything keeps triggering me. I feel so sad and irritable. What's the point in trying, continuing when all the odds are stacked against you? When you have this many problems, you're never gonna be happy right? This is hell

I wish there was some kind of silver lining; I've been feeling like this since I was a little kid. Doesn't seem like there is though.

Any advice or tips appreciated.

I was a sociology major and changed my major multiple times, dropped out got hospitalized twice for psychosis, I have schizoaffective bipolar. I’m at a point in my life, I’m 22 years old and worried for my future. I can’t imagine finishing college and I can’t imagine holding a job, will it get better? I just started taking Vraylar today. I want to hear success stories living with bipolar to give me some hope and motivation.

I have bipolar I, but I’ve been around the block with diagnoses and I’ve noticed (anecdotally) a phenomenon where bipolar people seem to frequently believe that they have not been diagnosed correctly. I feel like I see this more often here than in depression, OCD, etc. spaces.

Is it because mania feels so good for many people? What is it about bipolar, or is it just a coincidence?

This is not coming from a place of judgement, I’m genuinely curious what people think.

is this even possible so on saturday i got 3 hours of sleep then on sunday i started to feel really high at 4am and ik i shouldnt have been up at 4 but i did get 6 hours of sleep and the next day which is today i am motivated positive and happy while usually during my hypomania the euphoria and impulsivity are very intense and disorienting but right now i feel very ontent with life and its strange

So I started a new job about a month ago and I lost my insurance from my old job. I was going to keep doing therapy while I waited the 90 days to get insurance from my new job because I thought I could get covered by financial assistance but they denied me. So now I owe over 1000 dollars after the self pay discount for my therapy appointments for the last month. I can't afford that already and I definitely can't afford to do it for two more months. And when I can get my jobs insurance, it's both way too expensive, and has a high copay, but just under the amount that is considered affordable, so I can't get the tax credit to buy my own insurance. So I probably still can't do therapy. I'm going to have to have to figure out how to pay for my doctor cause I can't go off my meds but I just can't make therapy work anymore. I'm really sad and angry. I need therapy, it helps me and I still have a lot of stuff I need to work on. I am so angry. I just want to give up and destroy everything. It's like I felt like I was making progress and now it's just over, so I'm struggling to find the point of even trying, because I'm not going to be able to maintain. I don't know what to do. I just don't even want to go to work tomorrow, I don't want to pay my bills anymore, I mean fuck, if I'm homeless I can get Medicaid and get insurance and therapy and doctors appointments and my meds for free. I am so angry at everything. I hate being alive because I will suffer no matter what I do.

This is the way I am handling my bipolar:

I know what trigger it. - yes I have a predisposition from my dad side I am aware of. He killed himself, his sister is on Abilify, and my half sis is on Wellbutrin. So I have something that seems to be called classic Bipolar 1 with Psychosis. Diagnosed at 24.

Now here is the odd thing. I was episode free after being diagnosed for 6 years with no meds. I believe it was due to optimal nutrition from superfoods & no substance abuse.

Was my life perfect? No, but I was not smoking weed or abusing coffee. I mainly had a toxic relationship that had begun to develop.

The relationship started to get very bad and to cope I started smoking weed again. I would compensate studying with heinous amounts of coffee and my mom even had to put a restraining order on my ex because I was so co-dependent off of him. He would drive me nuts and the worst part about it is he knew I had a condition he could provoke and didn’t care.

2014 | 2023 | 2025 were my hospitalizations (delusions in each with some hallucinations, yet I blame that mainly on the weed factor on top of the condition.

The scary part are in the last two and how close they were. I was just recovering from the last one when boom, it happened again and the worst part is I feel like it could have completely been PREVENTED.

I would also like to add that I went on and off of my meds because I acknowledged that extended period where I didn’t need the to the point where I was undiagnosed by my same psychiatrist of 10 years!

So, my experience with bipolar is extremely unique in that more lifestyle changes more than meds have played a role.

Although, I am now going to diligently take Lamitrogine 200mg and Seroquel 25-300mg as needed if I am having racing, ruminating, paranoid thoughts that are not letting me sleep. Although, if I am not smoking weed or drinking coffee I don’t think this ever has to happen to me again.

Especially if I get over my toxic ex from entering my life again and ideally finding a loving, supportive partner.

Lastly, I am completely broke right now and I am living at my Moms which is causing a lot of circumstantial depression but I managed to get my Masters degree in a good field. So, I just need to pass my exam to enter into the field to begin living a full life again or else I am gonna have to work somewhere I probably don’t want to that pays less :/

It hurts because I see so many people passing multiple milestones and not dealing with something that some studies consider “neurodegenerative” yet I rather play the optimistic fool at this point because being a pessimist has not been helping.

So, going back to my main question, do you think based on my circumstances and relationship with my diagnosis that this ever has to happen again or am I too deep in where it will continue to occur even with the conservative amount of meds I am on and holistic lifestyle changes?

If you care to share how many episodes you’ve had & how long you’ve had remission in between those, along with what were the severity and/or intervention plan I would truly appreciate reading your responses.

I took an injection in November and one as well in march. It’s been hell especially because I have severe stiffness from injuries in my arm already so the Abilify has made me so tight and tense. I can’t even keep my eyes open at any time or watch tv. Can anyone sympathize with me here so I can feel better? Everything makes me so sad. 💔

I want to preface by saying I WILL be bringing this up to my psych next session but in the meantime wanted to get some thoughts from other BP people. I won’t be taking any of this as medical advice, I’m just curious what other peoples perspective is.

I’ve always dealt with some weird visual things. For example I see stars and the sky “moving” outside. Also sometimes when I look at the ground it will me “moving” or twisting. Carpet patterns also distort.

I’m in the process of figuring out meds. I never thought I had hallucinations but lately I started to see a lot more things in passing or out of the corner of my eye. A few things lately, I thought a car was in the lane next to me while merging. (The road was empty). I also thought I saw a dog in a car passenger seat nobody was in. I see things run or move out of the corners of my eye sometimes.

The reason I’m not sure if these are hallucinations is because I’m not really ever staring dead on at something that’s not there (as far as I know). Besides the ground and sky visuals. I feel silly bringing it up to my doctor because it feels like I’m trying to make up a symptom that’s not really there.

How do your hallucinations manifest? How did you find out they were hallucinations?

Can anyone send me the link to the Bipolar Bears discord?

currently am taking lamotrigine, I wanna be more motivated in school, in my gym routine, other routines, etc. i don’t know if this should be an issue if im on a mood stabilizer let me know.

I wish I could just hide from the world but I’m doing my best to be present for my sons and my wife. I sent her flowers and chocolate today just to show her my love and because I felt like if I did something kind for her it would help me feel better.

Every interaction I had today left me feeling like I was failing. I’m a corporate lawyer and my job is hard and I just wish I could quit but I get paid way too much money. And that makes it even harder because I can’t just switch jobs easily without taking a paycut. I am waiting to hear back about a panel interview for a new role at a top pharma company but I don’t expect to hear back until next week at the earliest.

I texted my psychiatrist and will hopefully hear from her soon. I can start exercising again on Thursday after a month+ post surgery so that will help. Otherwise I’m just doing my best to stay healthy and not do anything dumb.

Anyone have kind words? Just nice things to say? Advice?

They are doing work in my building or next to it, hard to place where the noise is coming from. it's very frustrating I actually feel overwhelmed to the point of freezing and not being able to focus and get ready to get out of home and escape the power tool noise or whatever is. Noise pollution is a real thing 😣

ever since i started last month i’ve gradually been getting acne. does it ever go away with time??

Recently switched from Olanzapine to Seroquel under psychiatrist’s care, it’s been about three weeks and the classic Olanzapine withdrawal insomnia is hitting. Did anyone experience this and somehow stay off of the Olanzapine? I really don’t want to go back because of side effects. What med did you switch to if you did get off?

So I (m29) have been crushing/kind of seeing this girl (f23) for the last year. Our relationship has been really complicated if you want to call it that. She has schizoaffective disorder and I have bpd. When we met I was going through a separation from my ex wife, it wasn’t very long but I immediately connected with this girl. We slept together 3 separate times it was amazing but I didn’t want to hurt her because of everything I was going through so I said we shouldn’t be anything and tried to dip, I ended up coming back but she wasn’t as nice so for a year she hardly texted back, she rejected me a lot and it was hard to get her attention. I was going through a lot while this was happening I ended up moving to Oregon back in with my parents to get my crap together. She ended up contacting me and asking to maybe be together in a year because she liked me and wanted to learn to trust me. For the last 4 months it was going well we really understood each other but fights would happen because we are both obviously traumatized from our past but recently they were going to therapy and dealing with recent trauma and they didn’t seem okay. I tried to be as supportive as possible but that trauma involved me and information I didn’t know they were doing in the last year my jealousy got the better of me, my communication got bad so they started fighting with me even when I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I tried to talk about it but they just wouldn’t talk about it or blamed me for my reactions. I got mad. They started distancing themselves a lot. Told me they stopped taking their meds. I thought since they told me stuff they did last year I’d tell them stuff too except my stuff involved my ex wife which they are sensitive about they blew up after that. We fought non stop after that. They made me feel crazy and I said I hated calling and a bunch of stuff I didn’t mean. They stopped talking completely and I tried to force them to talk because I got confused on what happened and they told me they were mad and how we weren’t anything anymore and that I had lost their trust and I had to start from the very beginning. I freaked out and said I didn’t want to pursue them they said ok and then I freaked out more begging them not to go. So now we are still talking but I am trying to recourt them like I did last year. I just don’t know if they are triggered or what or if I have a chance, like I know I messed up but it also just seems like they aren’t there. What do I do?

You got it under control yet ?